On Sunday, December 7th, we had our Carrot Day Celebration at 41 Western Ave here in Hull. We had 24 folks from around the neighborhood who came to join us at 12:30. We picked the time and day in conjunction with youth sports schedules and, of course, the weather and the frost.
In November in Hull, there was only one night where the temperature fell below 32° Fahrenheit — the 23rd at 31°. Below is a chart of the cold temperatures in Hull for the two weeks from November 30th to December 13th.
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
| 30 32° | 1 28° | 2 28° | 3 18° | 4 12° | 5 28° | 6 31° |
| 7 31° | 8 17° | 9 14° | 10 32° | 11 25° | 12 22° | 13 27° |
I came home early on Wednesday, December 3rd, and went straight to the garden. I harvested some of the parsley, sorrel, and dill, a little bit of the mint, and all of the lettuce, chard, and beets. I expected that the kale would be okay, so I left it alone. I was wrong, and two weeks later, the cold has gotten the kale, and I should have harvested that too.
I had harvested arugula and tomatoes the weekend before, and that would be their final gathering of 2025. That harvest and the pickings of December 3rd gave us the ingredients for amazing December salads. We ate those salads composed of home-grown butter lettuce and the wild arugula, with tomatoes, and depending on the day, carrots or beets. The garden gives gifts here in Hull deep into December.
Over the next few days, I announced to neighbors that we would have Carrot Day on Sunday, the 7th. I wrote some emails, I knocked on doors, and while one neighborhood family was away that weekend and could not come, 12:30 was chosen as the time we would gather. Katy had warned me that the neighborhood kids were getting older and I should try to find some families with younger children, or soon the 41 Western gathering would dwindle. Fortunately, one of my neighbors is a real connector, and she invited a family with children of seven, five, and three. Rather than dwindle, we had the largest gathering at 41 Western Ave for Carrot Day ever.
It is a simple concept. Wait for frost, gather folks, and celebrate by eating carrots. The carrots really are good, and the party is fun. In our neighborhood, it has become a seasonal tradition. The only thing involved now is picking carrots, washing them, eating them, and being and talking with friends. This was the second year without the tire swing, and it seems forgotten by the kids.
We really had a wonderful hour. The sun was out. There was no wind. Folks lingered. Middle schoolers ate carrots and talked for more than half an hour. The younger children asked for and got more carrots. The adult neighbors talked and ate carrots, and everyone said the carrots were really good. I agree, they really were exceptionally good. After about an hour, the carrots were eaten, and folks went home. As the family with the three young children left for home, the five-year-old told her mom, “They were better than cake.”
That is the idea for Carrot Day. Get people, especially children, to realize just how good a vegetable can be. This five-year-old was more open than most about vegetables — both her parents and her grandparents have gardens. At five, she already knows how good a vegetable can be. But it sure made me feel good to hear about her judgment and to see everybody having a good time and eating carrots. For me, seeing a range of folks from 3 to 70 happily eating sweet just-picked “frost-kissed-carrots” and talking about how good they are, and then just hanging out together in the yard and on the street for almost an hour, — WOW.
Carrot Day Massachusets is a small thing, but it is enough.
Eight years ago, when I started this blog, I thought that there would be more and more schools every year that would follow the tradition that began at South Shore Charter Public School almost 30 years ago. The tradition of planting carrot seeds in the spring garden with students and then harvesting and celebrating with them in the late fall. School Children at School Gardens across states would be celebrating Carrot Day in late fall. I thought there would be hundreds of schools where, after the frost, students would be eating “frost-kissed-carrots.” This year there may have been some schools celebrating growing and eating carrots, but I don’t know of a single school that celebrated Carrot Day. Eight years ago, I also thought the chefs and growers would take this on, and the added value of the “frost-kiseed-carrot” would be known far and wide. The benefit of cold on fall vegetables and carrots in particular is not something new. The esteemed farmer Elliot Colman grows and advertises “Candy Carrots,” which are harvested starting in December and going through the winter in Maine. But even farmers who trained at Elliot Coleman’s Four Season Farm and sell out of the local farmer’s market in Hingham and grow winter carrots don’t market them as special.
There are lots of reasons Carrot Day has not caught on as I thought it would, and of course, it still may, but I am at peace with these blog posts and our small carrot celebrations. Schools are complicated organizations that run on a set calendar and when Carrot Day happens is determined by the weather. At a school, space, time, and schedule drive events. Even at the school where I teach, we have not had a Carrot Day for the last two years. The school made a decision to remove garden beds to give more room for kids to play sports. We had three or four fun years of Carrot Day at CCSC, but not this year. June Fontaine, who carried on the Carrot Day tradition at South Shore after I left that school, retired. It may come back at South Shore, but not this year. Jonny Belber of Holly Hill Farm tells me he does not know of any Carrot Day Celebrations in local schools. He wrote to me that he will spend some of his winter time,
“Trying to plan and get a bunch of schools and other places planted for, “frost-kissed-carrots,” statewide.”
Another tricky thing about Carrot Day is the weather. Each year, the cold comes on in different ways. Some years it comes on slow, but this year it came fast. In Hull we had a couple of 31/32° nights in November and then suddenly in Early December, the temperatures dropped to 12° and froze the top of the soil. Frost is good for a carrot’s flavor, but being in frozen soil is not. The freezing alters the carrots’ texture and then they do not store well. Not a simple thing for a farmer to plan on and for a chef to organize a menu around a perfectly frost-kissed-carrot. Maybe one of the reasons a “frost-kissed-carrots” are so good is that they are rare.
Carrots on the left from Concord, NH, harvested on December 2nd. Molly grew these from last year’s seeds. I missed the other colors this year. The other three are from Windsor, VT, on November 6th, and brought to Baltimore for Thanksgiving.
Top left and middle, Harwich MA, November 20th, Cohasset MA early December, Bottom left Weymouth, MA, December 3rd, and the Hull carrot bed before its harvest on December 7th.
Here are the reports from friends who grew carrots. Some only grew a few, while the Potters out in Minnesota grew 1,100 pounds of carrots. But all declared that the carrots were good and that they had fun.
These words correspond to the pictures from the top left: Molly and I corresponded about when to pick the carrots, and she asked when to harvest, and this was my advice: “Yes, wait on your carrots, but you can thin them now and have a few to eat now. I have been doing that, and they are good. But the bulk of them should wait, and they grow really well in the fall.” Then she reported on October 10th, “Hi Ted, we got a frost last night! Should I pick all the carrots or can they stay in the ground while I pick them gradually?” I advised gradually as multiple cold nights improve the flavor of the carrots. On December 3rd she wrote from Concord NH, “I got spooked with all the snow yesterday and picked them all, what a wonderful harvest!” Jenny wrote, “They taste like a dream carrot! I was going to share the first one with Walker, but then it disappeared before I could stop myself.” Then she brought some Vermont “frost-kissed-carrots” to Thanksgiving in Baltimore, and she reported that her mom says, “Delicious! These carrots are so sweet.” Kendra wrote, “My kids ate them but didn’t get to harvest this year. They are both in high school, and life is insanely busy, as I am sure you remember.” Jonny wrote, “Frost-kissed-carrots” coming out of the Farm Food Pantry garden at Holly Hill Farm for donation to local food pantries. December sweetness cheer.” Lam wrote, “Thanks for the carrot seeds. We put down the seeds late this year, beginning of July, and we still have some little nice carrots.”
Nancy Potter wrote me: “We hope everyone has as wonderful a carrot harvest as we did. It was a perfect day!” Please watch the bounty of their labor in this 3-minute video, where through time-lapse film, you can see all the carrots come out of the ground and move toward cold storage. So impressive to see all that work and all that food grown the way food should be grown.
The four pictures below are from the Hull Garden on the day before the Winter Solstice, December 20th, 2025. When I wrote you in late October, I explained that I was pulling the rattlesnake beans in hopes of Christmas radishes and February arugula. The two pictures on the right show the cold frame, the baby arugula, and the radishes. The radish will not be ready by Christmas, but the arugula is looking set for a late winter harvest; see the tiny flecks of green evenly spaced below the radishes, those are all arugula sprouts!
May you all eat well and keep your hopes up in 2026! If you can garden!
Carrot Day Massachusetts 2023 